Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me …”
Emma Lazarus wrote these words in her poem “The New Colossus” that is inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty that stands in the New York harbor. They were important words of welcome to the myriad immigrants fleeing persecution from other lands to the New World of America. They spoke of hospitality, of openness to receive whoever came to these shores, and were an open invitation to a new life. Reflecting on them in light of both Paul’s words and Jesus’ teaching through his many parables and his actions of welcome and open reception to the outcast and ignored of his society, it seems to me that hospitality is essential for life and especially for Christian living in our time and place. But if hospitality to strangers means reaching out to huddled masses and wretched refuse and homeless, smelly people, count me out. I give money for that sort of thing. There’s no need for me to be involved with those people. What you are asking is radical stuff. Who are these people anyway? They are not part of my community. How can I help them if I don’t know who they are? And where did they come from anyway? Dr. Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, speaking at the opening convocation of my school, Garrett-Evangelical, last September, said something about hospitality, a theme we adopted for the year, that made me stop and think. He said “true hospitality is openness to new ideas.” I had never heard such a definition before. It was both new and radical to my way of thinking, but as I thought about the call to holy living, it made perfect sense to me. It moved hospitality from being simply how we welcomed people into our sphere of life, and into the realm of new thoughts and open acceptance of unfamiliar ideas and persons. Hospitality as openness to the new frees our minds from societal boundaries of race and clan and class and all the many unnatural barriers that separate us one from the other. True hospitality enables us to welcome the new in each person and in the world, and perhaps as Christians it can help us to see more clearly and to receive more readily the people of the world, Christian or otherwise. As Christians we are called to love. Jesus is clear in his command to love God totally and love neighbor as ourselves. And using Dr. Mouw’s definition, the question of the identity of one’s neighbor can open us up to a greater vision in seeing our neighbors for who they are in their fullness as children of God, which would then move us to offer true hospitality to all. Sounds radical, doesn’t it? But it’s not radical, it’s just Christian. So again I ask, who are those strangers and neighbors that are entitled to our hospitality? It’s certainly not those people who are crossing our borders illegally. They must be rooted out. They don’t belong here. They’re stealing the substance of our land and taking from the rightful owners. They are illegal, non-persons. They are the weeds that Jesus spoke of in his parable. Well … perhaps we should apply the analogy of weeds and wheat to the issue of illegal immigration from the perspective of the native peoples of this land. They showed hospitality to strangers, and paid a high price for it, namely the genocide of their people. Maybe that is the fear we reflect in our treatment of immigrants of color, legal or otherwise. And what about those who live among us, unknown, unseen, dismissed because of their situation in life. For too many they are the weeds of our society, because of their lack of resources, their poverty; they are strangers, persons we do not want to know, who are different than we are in all kinds of ways, who speak a different language, dress differently, enjoy unfamiliar foods, choose differently the persons on whom they will lavish care and love in the fullness of their sexual identity; even hold different religious or political beliefs. These are the ones on whom we are to lavish love and extend hospitality. What? This is radical stuff, preacher. No it’s not. It’s not radical, it’s just Christian. It is the way of Christ who counsels us through this parable to let all people live and grow together as the whole people of God; to celebrate our differences; to welcome and care for lost and the lonely, the depressed and the dispossessed, and all the strangers that come among us until Christ returns. It is the call of the Christian in the assurance that God and God alone will determine who belongs in the realm of God. Only God has the right to decide who goes and who stays; who’s in and who’s out; who’s up and who’s down. The Christ who fills our hearts with love calls us to show that same love through our hospitality to all people, in all the ways we can – by providing healthcare for everyone, by accepting differently-abled people into all walks of life; by receiving and honoring the way each person lovingly lives in their sexual identity; by sharing with and caring for the poor and needy; by showing compassion in all the ways that it is needed. And as Paul tells us, we can do so because of the righteousness of God that is made manifest in the redemption of Jesus Christ. Christ with the righteousness of God fills us with grace, God’s amazing love, unexpected and undeserved, so that we can be persons of love and live holy, Christian lives in this post-Christian world. Not only that but with arms outstretched, Christ stands ready to support us as we reach out our arms to receive the strangers in our midst. On the cross Jesus stretched out his arms embracing the whole world. When we get weary from opening our arms, just lean back on Christ, rest your open arms on his and experience the support that he provides as you try to live in holiness and righteousness through your hospitality offered to the stranger, the unknown neighbor and the whole world. In some place, at some time, in some way that we may not even know, much less understand, we too are or have been regarded as weeds to be plucked out, thrown out, abandoned or destroyed. But Christ reclaims us. Christ not only cherishes and nourishes us so that we can grow in the fullness of life, but Christ with open arms supports our efforts to live a holy Christian life enabling us to reach out in welcome and hospitality to all people. So will you do it? Will you try? Through Christ and with Christ we can extend true Christian hospitality to strangers as well as to family and friends. We can do it. With Christ we can. Through Christ we can live holy lives; we can be true Christians. It is his will for our lives, so we must. And by the way, it’s not radical, it’s just Christian.
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